Hope You Like All Nighters
Okay, I’ve been trying to dance around one particular spoiler in my coverage of Batwoman for a while now. But since there’s an entire episode dedicated to it, time for us to be open. Do Not Resuscitate is about many medical issues, but a key one involves Batwoman herself. Namely, the festering wound she got in the first episode of Season 2 from a Kryptonite bullet. Another big focus involves the hunt for the super cure, the Desert Rose.
The beginning of the episode starts with a shady doctor trying to synthesize the Desert Rose from the blood of a black child who was cured during the bat incident. The idea’s to use it to cure cancer in an elderly man, but things go horribly wrong. Blood pours out of every orifice, and the man dies painfully. Undeterred, the unnamed doctor wants Desert Rose, figuring the panacea could make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. So like any good medical professional, he sets loose a madman with brain cancer to go and find his cure. At first it’s not clear who this crazed man is, but it becomes clear later.
I’m Not Betraying My Girlfriend
Ryan starts things out as Batwoman. A routine crime fighting session goes awry when she has elevated heartrate and barely finishes the job. The bullet wound is doing some serious damage to her, and she winds up a the hospital. Here I grew to really like Angelique, who champions her girlfriend and demands treatment, even paying for a blood draw. Despite her criminal activity, it’s clear Angelique really does love Ryan. Ryan appreciates this, and spends a lot of time trying, and failing, to convince her to go legit.
Meanwhile, Alice and Ocean are spending more time together. I still like their chemistry, which is good since they spend most of the episode in what appears to be a derelict train. Turns out, before he was a full time botanist, Ocean used to train assassins for Safiyah. Until he got bored and decided to steal some Desert Rose and escape. Turns out, his missing memories and Alice’s are related to that incident. Safiyah is not playing regarding her medical panacea, but it also appears there’s another reason she wants her brother dead. It has something to do with the note Alice got pretending to be from Safiyah. She believes her brother is responsible, though we don’t get clarity about that in this episode.
All that would be great and lovey dovey, but there’s more complications. Snakebite, the new street drug, has apparently been made by none other than Ocean. Worse, one of the people dealing said drug is Angelique. Thus, Sophie offers Ryan a deal to get her closer to Ocean and the Napier painting. Ryan can help install a spy app on Angelique’s phone, and then her jacket will get tossed. It’s a bad deal, but Sophie is desperate to find Kate, and Ryan is desperate to protect her girlfriend. So she takes it.
Like a Bat Out of Hell
Meanwhile, the madman set loose at the beginning rams his truck into Mary and Jacob’s car, and takes both hostage. His goal is to force Mary to reproduce the Desert Rose, both for the shady doctor and for himself. Turns out, he was a human experiment, and Hamilton Dynamics tried and failed to make him sane. Now he has brain cancer that leads to explosive rage, right in his amygdala. Which of course means this is the Arrowverse’s version of the villain named Amygdala. So Mary and Jacob are in serious danger. She ends up revealing the details of her underground medical work to Jacob. The good Commander then gets stabbed and beaten by Amygdala, and things look bad until Mary lies that she knows where the Desert Rose is. She convinces her captor that she can produce a map showing how to get to Coriana, where the Desert Rose is grown.
Meanwhile, Ryan continues to have problems from her Kryptonite bullet wound. Her entire body is being slowly irradiated by it, and apparently it’s going to be fatal. Unless she can find a miracle cure, hint hint. I’m fine with the episode steering her back to Coriana and Kate. That’s clever writing. What’s less clever is how the wound is fatal. Last I checked, the only people who find Kryptonite fatal are Superman and Supergirl. I hope there’s a coherent resolution of this issue, but I’m not convinced yet.
This is Getting Complicated
Later on, Sophie finds Alice and Ocean and draws down on them. She gets the Napier painting, though Ocean lights it on fire first. I’m not sure if that was to reveal the gore covered map or what, but the episode doesn’t explain. Which is awkward, since later on the painting gets stolen by some masked goons. I assume they’re handlers of Amygdala and work for the doctor. This is after a great but tense fight scene. Amygdala nearly kills Mary and Jacob, and Batwoman only manages to beat him with a boost of adrenaline from Luke.
To my surprise, when Sophie is held at gunpoint by the masked menaces, Ryan as Batwoman saves Sophie’s life by trading the painting. As for the very end of the episode, it’s full of sadness and a bit of confusion on my part. Jacob forces Mary to close her clininc and Angelique finds the bug and seemingly leaves Ryan for good. Oh and then apparently Alice finally decides to stab Ocean and calls up Safiyah, only to reveal another Ocean alive and well. Which makes me think she’s playing with face masks again, which I’m still perplexed by. Not a bad episode overall, but it’s gonna be a long two week wait til the next Batwoman.
Final Verdict: 3.5/5
